So I set off on a journey to find the best way and settled on the teflon tape mod. I was a bit afraid of it though, because there was no pictorial guide (or I haven't found one yet) and I'm no wiz at opening stuff up and hate the idea of messing something up! Anyways, I longed for the taste of these beans so I decided to have a crack at it and it really turned out to be quite easy. So here's some pictures for those who want to but are afraid to go ahead with it. For me it was definitely worth it.
The guide I used is here.
#1 Taking the rubber grommets (circled with red) off reveals the screws to take the hopper off.
#2 Taking the screws out and pulling the hopper off gives you this nice view of grounds you may or may not have tasted through the years!
#3 By taking the plastic cover off (step 4 in the guide) and the brass screws out (step 5) you're able to take out the step counter.
#4 There's two step guides you need to take out, one at the front and one at the back. I think you could actually leave these in, but keep them in any case.
#5 And here's my upper burr set teflon taped up (step 11). The guide says "a good 5 layers", I ended up with 6. I started by only taping the upper part of the threads, but that really didn't do it for me, so I went and taped the whole thing. Works like a charm up to date.
Just remember to follow the guide, and of course do this on your own risk and take every precaution necessary.
This mod really set me on fire so I went ahead and adjusted the brew pressure on my Classic and fitted a new Silvia steam wand. Dang, life is sweet now.

Have a nice day,
Bragi